Blood in Gourd Didn't Belong to Louis XVI, New DNA Study Finds

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New genetic evidence casts further doubt on the authenticity of a
grisly French relic: a gourd long believed to be stained with the
blood of Louis XVI.

Scientists sequenced the genome from dried blood inside the
200-year-old gourd and found that it didn't match with the
DNA signatures of the king's ancestry, nor did it seem to carry
the code for Louis XVI's celebrated traits, like his imposing
height and blue eyes.

Deposed during the French Revolution, Louis XVI was executed by
guillotine in January 1793, months before his wife, Marie
Antoinette, fell victim to the Reign of Terror, too. According to
legend, witnesses soaked up the
king's blood with handkerchiefs after his beheading. An
inscription on the elaborately decorated gourd claims the vessel
held one of those bloody cloths. [ See
Photos of Louis XVI's Embalmed Head & Gourd ]

Last year, a group of scientists
compared the DNA signatures from blood found in the gourd
with the DNA of three modern male relatives of Louis
XVI from different branches of the Bourbon line. The Y
chromosomes from the three men matched one another, but not the
blood. This revelation, published in the European Journal of
Human Genetics, sparked a new investigation.

"When the Y
chromosome of three living Bourbons was decoded, and we saw
that it did not match with the DNA recovered from the pumpkin in
2010, we decided to sequence the complete genome and to make a
functional interpretation in order to see if the blood could
actually belong to Louis XVI," Carles Lalueza-Fox, of the Spanish
National Research Council (CSIC), said in a statement.

Based on their newly sequenced genome, Lalueza-Fox and colleagues
think whomever the blood in the gourd belonged to didn't look
like Louis XVI in terms of physical appearance or genealogical
heritage.

Louis XVI was known for his towering stature; he may have stood
over 6 feet (185 centimeters) tall. Though scientists do not
entirely understand the genetic basis for height, Lalueza-Fox and
colleagues wrote that the genome pieced together from the gourd
blood was not consistent with that of a very tall person, but
rather better matched someone with only slightly above-average
height for the day. The king also had blue eyes, while the person
who left their blood on the gourd more likely had brown eyes, the
researchers say.

What's more, the genome had some markers of northern Italian
heritage. This finding "cannot be easily reconciled with the
known Louis XVI family history, given that just one in 16
great-great-grandparents — Victor Amadeus II, Duque of Savoy
(1666–1732) — has some possible northern Italian ancestry," the
researchers wrote.